Ubuntu 10.04 Restores Google Search

The final version of Ubuntu Linux will restore Google as the default search engine in Firefox.

Rick Spencer, engineering manager for desktops at Canonical, made it official on the Ubuntu developer list. He had announced earlier in the year that Ubuntu was moving to Yahoo! as the default search engine in Firefox and began instituting it in the Lucid Lynx milestone releases. Recently, Spencer made the announcement that Lucid is scrapping the idea and going back to Google as the default search engine for the final freeze on April 15.

Spencer's announcement isn't terribly clear about the motivation behind the flip-flop, but that the "underlying circumstances can change unpredictably." In any case, the flip-flop will be transparent to most Ubuntu users upgrading from 9.10 to 10.04. Unless they were part of the development cycle for Lucid, they won't have to get used to a different default search engine, says Spencer.